Wednesday, January 12, 2011

i've been saving these up for a few months now. ever since going on the GF diet, we've actually been eating really well, thanks to Silvana Nardone, The Cake Mix Doctor and magazines like Living Without and Gluten Free Living. it's amazing what you find you CAN eat when you just get out there and pay attention. GF diets are becoming more and more frequent in our society. almost any restaurant you go to now has some sort of GF options. (that's another post altogether, though.) naturally, though, it's far easier to eat at home than out. and surprisingly, a good bit of what we already eat is GF, we just didn't know it. for instance, a roast cooked in the crock pot with potatoes and carrots, covered with Lipton French Onion soup is GF. but when we first started, we bought Silvana Nardone's book Cooking for Isaiah and started cooking out of that. here are just a few of our adventures in GF cooking:

this entire meal is from Sivlana -

Grilled Asparagus with Creamy Lemon Dip

this is the lemon dip - and it was SOOOO good!

grilling the asparagus

grilling the Grilled Peach BBQ Chicken Wings

the sauce for the chicken - has peach jam, vinegar, garlic, salt and hot sauce (which we left out)

yum!!!

chicken and sauce!

my plate!

bubba didn't like the asparagus...

and marti isn't a rice person...

but the meal was a HUGE hit!!!

loving our first meal out of Silvana's book, we decided to try the rest of her recipes. this was breakfast for dinner:

banana pancakes...

with warm cinnamon goo!

cooking the pancakes

this was a first for me

but they were SOOOO good!!!

so here are a few other adventures - i'll let you know where the recipe came from in the caption:

rosemary sprigs...

Silvana's Maple-Mustard Pork Loin...

pork loin with bacon and potatoes

finally finished!!! it was SO delicious! and a great attempt for someone (like me) whose never done anything like this!

the kids' plates :)

mixing Silvana's strawberry cupcakes

perfectly pink...

for a princess's party cupcakes!!

gluten free noodles...must be cooked VERY carefully

ground turkey...

yep. velveeta and stewed tomatoes...see where this is going?

mixed the noodles, tomatoes, and meat together and then threw in chunks of velveeta

baked it until the cheese was melted and stirred it in. this was my recipe and it turned out really good, but it did NOT reheat. ick.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

i've been on doxycycline hyclate since the 29th of december...that's four days now. and for the first time in a long time, i've been back to taking my zofran for nausea. and in some cases, being sick anyway. so i checked it out and the side effects are nausea, vomiting, and loss of appetite. okay, so that's explainable. but after talking to mom about it, we wondered: does it have gluten in it? so we do a little research - www.glutenfreedrugs.com. if you take medication, have you considered the possibility of it being gluten free or not? i never had. Gluten Free Drugs has a drug list - and you can read it in several different ways, but i chose the alphabetical list. so i checked out my doxycycline...there are three manufacturers that ARE gluten free and have been checked. naturally, the manufacturer on MY generic hasn't been checked, and i'll be darned if i can figure out how to do that. so now i wonder...am i back to being sick because my meds to make me not sick are making me sick? (get that?)

i also double checked my daily meds. my celexa is good. but - and if you have a thyroid disease as well, this is important - synthroid can no longer guarantee a GF status. well, yikes. isn't that the only thyroid drug out there? and i know it doesn't even come in generic. so i'm questioning it. guess i'll be asking the doc when i go back.

what about you? anybody else come across drugs making them sick? i want to thank the people at Gluten Free Drugs for posting this list. it's nice to be able to check my meds against it and, if necessary, make changes.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

just as with food, i believe that those of us with major allergies should be able to look at ANY label and see the words "MAY CONTAIN" followed by an allergen. and likewise, if the product does not contain any gluten, it should have the GF label on it. so what can we do about it? we can band together. i'm starting a campaign, Cosmetic Allergen Alert. if you have a major allergy, please consider joining the campaign to contact the FDA and require allergy labels on cosmetic and drug products!!!

i'm not entirely sure how i'll be going about this. i do know that to start with, i need YOUR help. if you have one of the eight major allergies -*milk*egg*tree nuts*peanuts*fish*shellfish*soy*wheati need to know if you've ever encountered that allergy in a cosmetic product. that can be makeup, hair care, body products (such as body wash, soap, lotion, scrubs, shaving cream, etc), or any kind of drug or medication. from there, i plan to contact the FDA with my findings. i know i'm not the only person in the world who has dealt with this. and what if my allergy to wheat was severe? what if it was a peanut allergy? anaphylaxis? has anyone considered the fact that someone with a severe allergy might encounter an "organic" product that contained their specific allergen? who wants to go into anaphylactic shock in the shower because of a shampoo???? these things should be clearly labeled. so if you agree, please comment below, leaving your first name, location (state only), and blog address if you have one. share this blog with your readers. when i have fifty names, i'll start the FDA complaint process. i believe this to be important. i know that my reaction of acne and a flaky scalp seem minor to some. but does that mean that i should have to carry my list of products in my purse -

cosmetic ingredients containing gluten:

hyrolyzed malt extract

hydrolyzed wheat protein

hydrolyzed vegetable protein

wheat germ

vitamin e

cyclodextrin

barley extract

fermented grain extract

oat (avena sativa)

stearyldimoniumhydroxypropyl

samino peptide complex

phytosphingosine extract

triticum vulgare

dextrin

dextrin palmitate

maltodextrin

Secale Cereale

Sodium C8-16 Isoalkylsuccinyl Wheat Protein Sulfonate

yeast extract

anything with wheat in the name

- so i can cross check ALL ingredients before i buy? there are so many other things i could be doing with that time. because, again, if it was a serious allergy, it would be taken seriously. and i know that my frustration level was just as serious. and if you've been through this, you know what i mean.

it's becoming easier and easier to EAT gluten free. shouldn't it also become easier to LIVE gluten (or dairy or egg or fish or nut) free???

since my last post, a lot has happened! my parents and i took my kids to disney for Christmas and had a wonderful, wonderful time. i've also changed concealers and what a difference!!! see for yourselves:

i know my numbers are backwards :) this was on December 15, just two days after my last post.

this side, thankfully, looks better...

...but my forehead still looks bad...

so i didn't get to take DAILY pictures, like i promised, what with disney and Christmas and New Years. however, i did start noticing a HUGE difference. i bought a concealer that i know for a fact - ingredient list! - does not contain any wheat derivatives. combined with serious acne therapy - benzoyl peroxide face wash (which WILL bleach your towels, fyi) and salicylic acid emergency gel (be sure you still use some sort of a moisturizer - oil free, acne, whatever - at night), my face is looking MUCH better.

this is today (excuse the bored look) - january 1, 2011

i know the pictures are not as close up, but you can still tell...it's not as angry red, there are fewer itty bitty bumps and the break outs are NOT (yay!) cystic!!!

it's amazing. truly amazing. unfortunately, while i was in disney, i started using a hotel shampoo (not from WDW) that turned out to have wheat or some derivative in it. my scalp has been flaking for two and a half weeks now. soon as i can, i'll be getting a T-Sal shampoo by Neutrogena to pull all the dry flakes off the scalp and hopefully start a repair on that.

in doing all this, i've come to learn that with food products, the FDA requires an ingredient label that includes an allergen warning. you can read about it here. however, in my research, i can't find ANYTHING requiring companies to include that MAY CONTAIN warning on other products. products like cosmetics (FDA's labeling manual can be found here). i know i'm not the only person in the world who has had this problem. and i think it's time that the FDA recognized that allergens are not only contained in food products. and by allergens, i don't mean fragrances and things like that. i know people have allergic reactions to those type things. being a Clinique master consultant for quite sometime, i learned a few things. but what i'm talking about are products that contain one of the top 8 major allergens (provided to my by Mayo Clinic):

*milk

*eggs

*tree nuts

*peanuts

*fish

*shellfish

*soy

*wheat

i do realize that very few, if any, cosmetic products contain shrimp or dairy. but you would be really surprised at the number of products containing wheat, soy, and nuts or nut oil. if you have an allergy to one of these major allergens, you need to be carefully checking the labels on your cosmetic products - everything from make up to hair care to body wash, shaving cream, and lotion. wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to learn what products to look for? i carry this list in my purse everyday to check against ingredient labels:

cosmetic ingredients containing gluten:

hyrolyzed malt extract

hydrolyzed wheat protein

hydrolyzed vegetable protein

wheat germ

vitamin e

cyclodextrin

barley extract

fermented grain extract

oat (avena sativa)

stearyldimoniumhydroxypropyl

samino peptide complex

phytosphingosine extract

triticum vulgare

dextrin

dextrin palmitate

maltodextrin

Secale Cereale

Sodium C8-16 Isoalkylsuccinyl Wheat Protein Sulfonate

yeast extract

anything with wheat in the name

seriously. shouldn't it be easier? just as with food, i believe that those of us with major allergies should be able to look at ANY label and see the words "MAY CONTAIN" followed by an allergen. and likewise, if the product does not contain any gluten, it should have the GF label on it. so what can we do about it? we can band together. i'm starting a campaign, Cosmetic Allergen Alert, which you can read further about in my next post. if you have a major allergy, please consider joining the campaign to contact the FDA and require allergy labels on cosmetic and drug products!!! i don't think people realize just how serious these allergies can be. i know i didn't. i figured it was only in what i ate, but thanks to Glutenista's Tips and Tricks, i learned that gluten can be in anything. which explained SO much about my weird breakouts! so let's get together, help each other out, and bring this to the attention of the government agency that can make our lives easier, simply be requiring a little label.